if there ever were men who deserved backing, Mr. C. E. Green, Mr. Buxton, and those who established a good county club and a ground home in the course of a very few years deserve it.

Kent sustains a great loss owing to Lord Harris's temporary exile in India; and still, as time passes very quickly, we may look forward to seeing the ex-Governor of Bombay again at Lord's in flannels.

The season begins very early. Surrey and Hants break ground in county matches at the Oval on May 5th; the M.C.C. follow suit on May 8th v. Kent, at Lord's; and the Australians will play their first match against Lord Sheffield's Eleven in his park on the same day; and then the ball will be rolling all over England.

There is one lamentable fact about amateur cricket, which is the scarcity of good bowling. It is a curious thing, but forty or fifty years ago there were numbers of very first-rate amateur bowlers; and for one sufficient reason, that all England were not then thrown together as one cricketing family as it is now; and there being a great dearth of professionals, unless amateur bowlers learnt to bowl, there would have been no opportunities for cricket. Anyhow, now let us hope for a fine summer, plenty of good cricket, and don't let us fret if the Australians win a large number of matches. I shall not be surprised if they do, for youth will be served, and probably in that respect our cousins will have the best of the handicap.

If the good news is true that Mr. W. E. Roller has recovered, and is "fit" for this year, it will make a great difference to Surrey, as he is one of the few amateur good "head bowlers," and a very good run-getter on a bad wicket as well as on a lawn.

Fast Hounds and Faulty Hounds.

ARE the foxhounds of the present day too fast for their work and for our advantage? I speak of the shires, where the fields are comparatively enormous, and in so fixing the locality, or rather its conditions, my whole card-house of opinion and reasons threatens to tumble to pieces. I can only set argument and counter-argument together, and ask whether you do not think things are best as they are, or how would you better them?

The fastest hounds do not kill their fox quickest. The most even workers--the least faulty pack-will, uninterrupted, and in an enclosed country, account for him more surely and in less time than the speediest. But with a great

field-by courtesy behind them, in fact, often round them-the slower pack would seldom have room while the country was practicable and the scent not breast high. (Every season is not as this season, when scent has been ravishing, and scarce a complaint of over-riding has been whispered. How happy the huntsmen, especially those on their trial, who have handled hounds in '89, '90!) Very fast hounds put in the bulk of their work while the scent serves and their fox is pursuing an even course; then when he makes an untoward twist, or crosses a patch of scentless ground, they have at least time to make one cast for themselves before the surrounding acres are foiled by steaming horsemen (whom, it is but just to add, they endeavour, with the pluck and nonchalance peculiar to high-bred foxhounds, as much as possible to ignore). Slow hounds could never get away from a crowd. Do you not notice (and you and I are probably no more self-restrained than our fellowmen) that whenever hounds are working a cold line, the tongue of the discoverer is as the drop of the flag? We all go at once for we can't afford to be behind our comrades. The same unmeasured and overwhelming energy would increase tenfold were hounds going their best pace, and yet could never outstrip us. The exigencies of the country might help them a little even then, but, depend on it, we shouldn't; there are too many of us in the swim. On the other hand, it is mortifying, I grant, that, on your best horse, with your best intentions, a fair start and a facile country, a smart pack will sometimes leave you, as it were, standing still. Another counterargument comes in here. Would men be in such a desperate hurry if hounds were not so fleet, and did not call upon them for such frantic haste, bringing them rushing up from front and rear, overshooting the mark, and driving the pack to perdition, or the huntsman off his head?

Even

Now, if the shires were made for you and me, and a few invited friends, it would be a very different matter. then we should not be content to find our fox in the morning and kill him in the evening; but we should expect to see him driven steadily to his death-hounds coming round to his turns-and should see him brushed far oftener, and quite as quickly as now, when a huntsman's main use is to set right the mischief caused by his field, and by the over-eagerness of his hounds.

It does not for a moment hold good to suggest that the packs of the Midlands are bred for pace, as compared with those of the provinces (if I may employ the invidious term). Their breeding and best properties are chiefly obtained from countries that are much plough, if not mostly plough. The Brocklesby Rallywood was said by the Druid to have made a new pack for the Belvoir. The great Burton pack of Lord Henry Bentinck's was created in a plough country; yet

every good kennel in the shires is enriched by it. The Fitzwilliam was never a grass country, and for thirty years has been chiefly plough. The Oakley is very ploughy indeed; but where, in recent years, have more beautiful and

fashionable hounds been bred than here? The Grove is not a grass country, and assuredly Mr. Parry had but little turf with the Puckeridge. Yet from these kennels comes very much indeed of the material upon which the packs of the Midlands depend for quality, hunting power, and speed-upon all which properties, too, such famous kennels as the Duke of Beaufort's, Lord Fitzhardinge's, and Lord Coventry's have ever insisted, for countries that contain more varied requirements than the actual shires, and have obtained these properties from much the same sources. In fact, the best foxhounds throughout England are bred exactly alike, whether from grass or plough, and it happens that more famous and long-abiding packs have belonged to the latter class of country than the former. If such a general consensus of opinion, north, south, east, and west, exists upon what constitutes a desirable foxhound, there cannot be much wrong with the product. Nor can it be seriously sustained that we could afford any diminution of pace in countries where a crowd rides to hounds. No; so long as they cannot course down a fresh fox in view, they can scarcely be too fast. But for choice I would rather see a pack level for speed than even level for looks.

It will be granted that every horse has his faults. It may be almost equally indisputable that every hound has his shortcomings, or his obtrusive sins. If not, then is he or she better than human? I question, indeed, if you could ever get sixteen couple of the lords and ladies of creation to work at all level and under control upon any line of pursuit. Certainly not as a mixed pack. And still less could you expect them to be individually faultless? There are sinners, and enough, in every community. Why not, then, in the community of a pack of foxhounds? I am bound to admit that-very fortunately for the feelings of every huntsman (whose sensitiveness as to his dearly-loved hounds is laudably and invariably beyond all beliet)-most of us know little and care less as to how the individuals of a pack are conducting themselves. Occasionally, however, it occurs to some of us to leave off talking, or racing, or looking for the next place to jump, and then-if we are not at that unlucky moment in the middle of the packa few outside hounds may take our notice; and we treasure up their sins accordingly. For, if we believe what has been handed down to us from all time, and what certainly accords to a great extent with our own experience, the hounds that really kill a fox are those that you never see at all, because they are doing their work in the middle. A loitering brute of course we all hate, for he gets in the way at the fences,

probably opens the floodgates of the master's eloquence upon us, and, when we have broken his ribs, we are told is "the best hound in my whole pack, sir."

I remember no single instance in which proper and becoming gratitude was expressed at such a riddance. Nor is the field ever invited to ride over a skirting scoundrel that has been working "outside" or ahead of his comrades all day, though he may not only have deserved it, but will assuredly get it on the first occasion the huntsman may catch him on the quiet, i.e., unless the kennelman's hammer has been noted for him on his return home. A huntsman, indeed, has to connive at many a felony-consoling himself with muttered anathema when one or other of his favourites commits atrocity worthy of the halter. The most obtrusive sinner of all is the offender who, from age, want of speed, or natural inborn "cussedness," gives tongue loudly from the background, proceeding, with much noise, to do over again the work already done by the body of the pack. He calls back the young hounds, baffles and unnerves the hard runners, and is, in fact, a gross traitor in the ranks-for he helps a fox just when every moment is of consequence to prevent his escape. This is the hound we all applaud as having as having "a wonderful nose,' and he becomes such a favourite that we all know him, and the huntsman probably keeps him on to humour us.

And we are apt to be rather fond of the sinner next in degree-the_sneak who goes off at score without note or whimper. For we see his brilliant hits, and are probably not near enough to him at the time to notice his silence (even if we should concern ourselves about it if we did). In any case we should, I take it, scarcely consider it incumbent upon us, as members of the field, to ride up to huntsman or master at once to convey the intelligence, or even reserve it for the happy moment when he has finally lost his fox. But as well try to grade the sins of the decalogue for the edification of our companions in society, as to measure the degree of the various hound faults! I have just touched on a few, for each and every one of which the perpetrator ought to be forthwith drafted or destroyed. And this drafting should be done quite as freely at the head of a pack as at the tail.

BROOKSBY.

66

THAT the interest in stage-coaching is not dying out would be made very clear by a visit any morning, between ten and eleven, to the Northumberland Avenue; for the conversion of the White Horse Cellars, in Piccadilly, to other-and, as the men of the road" will think, baser-uses has compelled the proprietors of the road coaches to seek other quarters. A few years ago it really did seem as if the revival of the road coaches was to be but temporary, and as if the railways had been too much for them, for the total number running in and out of London had gradually diminished from thirteen or fourteen to four or five. But it is gratifying to note that the pendulum is swinging in the opposite direction, and for the last two or three seasons the total of coaches has been almost as large as ever it was before. Last season there were a dozen coaches in London, with three or four others running between provincial towns, such as Eastbourne and Brighton, Folkestone and Canterbury, Tewkesbury and Cheltenham; and the prospect for the coming season is at least as good. As a general rule, the arrangements for a season are complete at Easter, but when it happens that Easter falls early in April, as this year, a start is not made by most of the coaches quite so soon. even those coaches which do not begin running at Easter have by that time decided upon their " plan of campaign," and it is evident, from the particulars which have been already made public, that the season of 1890 will begin under auspices at least as favourable as those of 1889.

But

As I said, the great coaching centre is now in Northumberland Avenue, and of the twelve which will be running in and out of London this summer, six will start from the Hôtel Victoria and three from the Hôtel Métropole; while of the three others, two will still make Piccadilly their headquarters, and the twelfth (the St. Albans "Wonder") is still without a local habitation. Taking the Hôtel Victoria coaches first, the six which start from there are the "Rocket" to Colchester, the "Old Times" to Virginia Water, the twin "Comets" to Brighton, the "Express" to Eton, the "Magnet" to Reigate, and the "Telegraph" to Hertford. The four first-named are already running, and the "Rocket" is an entirely new venture, due to the enterprise of Mr. Mackenzie, who, with Edward Fownes as coachman, will leave London on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, reaching Colchester the same evening, and returning upon alternate days. The double journey is, of course, too long to be done in a single day; but in the case of the Brighton route, still worked by Mr. Stewart Freeman, Colonel VOL. LIII.-NO. 363.